Gigabyte MA790FX DQ6

[Phenomenalspeed]

your actualy lucky that they are RMAing at all realy, I never have that good of luck. Anyways keep us posted and let us know how it goes and how the board turns out for you!

I have very good news.

I got the motherboard back yesterday (Monday) from Gigabyte. Amazing considering they only received it last Thursday.
Initially I was sceptical as I'd heard bad things about Gigabyte RMA process (on here and other places). I just thought it was too good to be true.
I wanted to find out exaclty what was done to the board before ripping apart my current AM2 system. They enclosed a sheet with the motherboard but it made no sense to me. I phoned them and they said they replaced a faulty component. If anyone is interested The component is designated no 185. I was curious so I spent a while searching for this component on the board. It is underneath and in-between the two orange x8 PCI-express slots.

Anyway I put my phenom 9850 in and the other essentials. The moment of truth. I swithced it on and it POSTed successfully Further than I got last time. I was able to boot windows. I quickly noticed that every time I restart I would get that silent (no beep code) black screen again. The same when I tried to change a BIOS setting and exit and restart. I had to clear CMOS every time. It was saying CMOS checksum error or something like that. The board had BIOS F4 on it. ( I did ask them to update to the latest BIOS for me but that's another story) I thought that may be the problem. So I flashed it with F3 and then with F5. It made no difference. At this point I was fearing the worst. I was cursing Gigabyte for rushing this board back to me without testing it properly and thinking I would end up having to send it back again. I called it a day.


Today I decided to try my other PSU (from my case). The one I was using to test it was 450W and only had a 4pin CPU 12v power cable. I tried my main PSU (from my signature) and hey presto it worked! I don't know it was the lower power output or the 4pin 12v CPU or maybe the PSU is faulty but this board didn't like it. I was not expecting to even be able to POST with the Phenom 9850 BE using a BIOS earlier than F5 so that was a big bonus. I am quite happy with the motherboard at the moment.

I was never expecting such a lightning fast turnaround from Gigabyte RMA technical support department. I know some of you have had your problems with them but in my case they were good. I don't know about in other countries but here in the United Kingdom they are pretty bloody good based on this experience.

[Phenomenalspeed]

I've just been trying some overclocking using Motherboard Intelligent Tweaker (M.I.T) in BIOS and have encountered some strange things. I have managed to increase the CPU multiplier and Vcore successfully.

I have tried to change the intergrated memory controller(CPU-northbridge) settings. I changed its multiplier from auto to 11. That should give it a frequency of 2200Mhz. I saved to CMOS and it restarted no problem there.
When I got into windows CPU-Z, AMD Powermonitor and CPU Brain identifier all registered it at the default frequency 2000Mhz instead of the expected 2200Mhz. When I changed the intergrated memory controller voltage in the BIOS it registered correctly in AMD powermonitor.

I also wanted to increase the voltage of my RAM in order for it to run at its EPP timings of 4-4-4-12. When set to auto it gives 1.8V and registers as 1.856V in the PC Health screen. I increased the RAM voltage by 0.250V. Next to DDR2 Voltage control it changed to show 2.10. I hit F10 to save to CMOS and it restarted no problem. However when I go back into BIOS and look at the PC Health screen it is still showing 1.856v. Even though on the M.I.T screen voltage control is still showing and increase of 0.25v equalling 2.10v.
When I boot to Windows Everest sensor shows a Vdimm of 1.86V. I don't understand this at all. I disabled Auto Xpress to see if that would make any difference and it didn't. Also when in Auto Xpress EPP Mode and EPP Voltage control are never selectable. I have no idea why.

Can anyone please shed any light on the above? I am clueless.
Any other weird quirks of this motherboard that I should be aware of??

Thanks.

[keithlm]

Also when in Auto Xpress EPP Mode and EPP Voltage control are never selectable. I have no idea why.

If you manually set the speed OR the voltage for the memory... so they are on any setting OTHER than "AUTO" then the EPP settings/voltage will not be available.

OR you don't have 1066 ram so it doesn't have an EPP setting.

[Fulgore0rb]

G0ldbr1ck could I get your settings details for the Dominators on your DS5 board? Any settings that are different from optimized defaults would be good enough I think. Like for one are you using the Auto Xpress > EPP Mode or just setting the memory speed to 1066 and leaving auto timings? My dominators seem to like around 1.95v also how about yours?

Thanks

[G0ldBr1ck]

G0ldbr1ck could I get your settings details for the Dominators on your DS5 board? Any settings that are different from optimized defaults would be good enough I think. Like for one are you using the Auto Xpress > EPP Mode or just setting the memory speed to 1066 and leaving auto timings? My dominators seem to like around 1.95v also how about yours?

Thanks

I have Auto Xpress > EPP mode enabled and EPP voltage enabled (For this to be available you must have all other ram settings to auto then reboot back to bios then will be available to enable). Changing anything manualy just dose not work. What that gives me is:

unganged (have tryed and benched both ways and not realy any diff. in performance but in ganged would get errors once in a wile)
DDR 1066
5
5
5
15

22
2T
@2.1v (There have been allot of revisions on the dominator ram and they have changed voltages, one of my sets is 2.2v and the other is 2.1 but both seem fine at 2.0 but I have read that the newer revisions use a lower voltage yet so not sure what yours is able to do.)

Sorry for the late reply, been out of town all weakend. Hope this info helps but feel free to ask if you need more.

[Fulgore0rb]

Thanks G0ldbr1ck. I am narrowing the problem down it seems. I currently seem to be stuck at the increased DIMM voltage delimma of causing problems. I cannot get up passed 1.95v without many issues. I know some other voltage increases should resolve this problem. Goldbr1ck have you increased any other voltages and to what value? Northbridge and CPU voltages seem to be the most commonly increased to help this issue- and sometimes HT Recieve/Transmit voltages. FYI my Dominator version is rated at 2.1v.

I fear I may need to change my BIOS revision to get the NB overvoltage to work correctly. (still using F5- since the F6 seems to have a problem with phenom 9600's)

[Phenomenalspeed]

If you manually set the speed OR the voltage for the memory... so they are on any setting OTHER than "AUTO" then the EPP settings/voltage will not be available.

OR you don't have 1066 ram so it doesn't have an EPP setting.

Thanks. My RAM is 800Mhz and it does have an EPP profile. When I changed it back to auto they became selectable. I took RAM from another PC without a profile and the options weren't even there at all.

Even when I choose EPP mode and Voltage by EPP save the changes and reboot there is no increase in DDR2 voltage registered in the BIOS PC health screen or Windows. The only thing that does change is auto timings in DDR2 configuration screen. When EPP mode is off the auto timings are 5-5-5-18. With EPP mode and voltage on they change to 4-4-4-12. This is useless though as when I run CPU-Z , Everest, AMDOverdrive, and Central brain idenitifier the timings are still 5-5-5-18.